Prime Keyboard Modification

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Hi. I bought the Prime and Keybaord dock and love them! The only thing is that I am not a fan of the stock ICS browser and I am sure that I am not the only one. I wanted to know if there is a way to change the browser that is launched when pressing the internet/browser launch button (the one with a saturn-ish looking planet on it) on the keyboard dock because I haven't heard of anyone able to do it. I have tried disabling the stock browser but that makes the button unable to launch anything. I have my Prime rooted as well. I figured that I start a thread on this issue to see if anyone has been able to do it.

Don't think the browser question has ever been answere but I do think somewhere in these ATP or the OG TF forums, it has been said how to modify the key map files or something. That'd be a starting point, maybe.

Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk

What if we replaced the system app with opera? (or browser of choice)

Depends on how it's being launched. I.e. if it's dependant on the class name inside the APK, mv Opera Browser != good enough. Although replacing Browser with a stub that just forwards to another app is probably possible.

Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk

This has been brought up before (with the TF101), and there hasn't been any progress made that would enable this functionality.

In the keylayout file, it's key 150 that launches the EXPLORER keycode, but I can't find any documentation that shows what that launches by default (other than the default browser).

Edit: After some more digging, it appears that this functionality resides within the Asus Keyboard IME. Going to see if I can work around this.

Edit2: Success! I was able to take the deodexed Keyboard.apk (thanks Swiftks) and modify the smali to launch com.beansoft.browserplus (ICS Browser+) instead of the built-in ICS browser (com.android.browser). Happy happy joy joy!

Unfortunately this means that the edit would have to be done per-browser. I haven't tried this with Firefox, Chrome, Boat, or Opera, but will look into those tomorrow. For now, if anyone wants to test this (no guarantees, as usual with system app mods) I've attached it to this post. Make sure you backup your stock Keyboard.apk and Keyboard.odex first!

Quick how-to:
1) adb push Keyboard_ICS+.apk /mnt/sdcard/
2) adb to TFP, remount system read-write
3) cd /system/app, cp Keyboard.* /mnt/sdcard/backups (or where ever you want to keep your originals)
4) rm Keyboard.*
5) cp /mnt/sdcard/Keyboard_ICS+.apk ./Keyboard.apk
6) chmod 644 Keyboard.apk
7) reboot

When your TFP comes back up, you should be able to hit the browser button on the dock and it should launch ICS Browser+ (assuming you've got it installed already).

Props to appelflap for making a kick-ass browser, and to Swiftks for deodexing the system files.

EDIT: Attachment removed. Updated thread contains new APK.

Edit: Failed to read you were already going to do this for chrome tomorrow. Best of luck and I look forward to it.

Originally Posted by agentdr8

This has been brought up before (with the TF101), and there hasn't been any progress made that would enable this functionality.

In the keylayout file, it's key 150 that launches the EXPLORER keycode, but I can't find any documentation that shows what that launches by default (other than the default browser).

Edit: After some more digging, it appears that this functionality resides within the Asus Keyboard IME. Going to see if I can work around this.

Edit2: Success! I was able to take the deodexed Keyboard.apk (thanks Swiftks) and modify the smali to launch com.beansoft.browserplus (ICS Browser+) instead of the built-in ICS browser (com.android.browser). Happy happy joy joy!

Unfortunately this means that the edit would have to be done per-browser. I haven't tried this with Firefox, Chrome, Boat, or Opera, but will look into those tomorrow. For now, if anyone wants to test this (no guarantees, as usual with system app mods) I've attached it to this post. Make sure you backup your stock Keyboard.apk and Keyboard.odex first!

Quick how-to:
1) adb push Keyboard_ICS+.apk /mnt/sdcard/
2) adb to TFP, remount system read-write
3) cd /system/app, cp Keyboard.* /mnt/sdcard/backups (or where ever you want to keep your originals)
4) rm Keyboard.*
5) cp /mnt/sdcard/Keyboard_ICS+.apk ./Keyboard.apk
6) chmod 644 Keyboard.apk
7) reboot

When your TFP comes back up, you should be able to hit the browser button on the dock and it should launch ICS Browser+ (assuming you've got it installed already).

Props to appelflap for making a kick-ass browser, and to Swiftks for deodexing the system files.

Any chance you could hook one up to work with boat browser? I use it now that flash doesn't work in opera. It would be awesome to be able to use the keyboard launch key. Thanks!

Doesn't look like this can be modded to work with browsers that aren't based on the stock ICS browser. The activity for alternate browsers isn't explicitly defined in the AndroidManifest.xml for the Keyboard.apk, so it throws an exception when trying this mod for Chrome, Boat, etc.

So for now, the only way I can foresee overcoming this limitation (because the manifest can't be edited without being re-signed) would be to build a small helper app that extends com.android.browser much like ICS+ browser does, but instead of launching a standard browser view, use it to launch a browser picker or the default browser.

Maybe in my spare time I'll figure out how to do something like that.

Originally Posted by agentdr8

Doesn't look like this can be modded to work with browsers that aren't based on the stock ICS browser. The activity for alternate browsers isn't explicitly defined in the AndroidManifest.xml for the Keyboard.apk, so it throws an exception when trying this mod for Chrome, Boat, etc.

So for now, the only way I can foresee overcoming this limitation (because the manifest can't be edited without being re-signed) would be to build a small helper app that extends com.android.browser much like ICS+ browser does, but instead of launching a standard browser view, use it to launch a browser picker or the default browser.

Maybe in my spare time I'll figure out how to do something like that.

Hey, thanks for the help man. I look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Originally Posted by agentdr8

This has been brought up before (with the TF101), and there hasn't been any progress made that would enable this functionality.

In the keylayout file, it's key 150 that launches the EXPLORER keycode, but I can't find any documentation that shows what that launches by default (other than the default browser).

Edit: After some more digging, it appears that this functionality resides within the Asus Keyboard IME. Going to see if I can work around this.

Edit2: Success! I was able to take the deodexed Keyboard.apk (thanks Swiftks) and modify the smali to launch com.beansoft.browserplus (ICS Browser+) instead of the built-in ICS browser (com.android.browser). Happy happy joy joy!

Unfortunately this means that the edit would have to be done per-browser. I haven't tried this with Firefox, Chrome, Boat, or Opera, but will look into those tomorrow. For now, if anyone wants to test this (no guarantees, as usual with system app mods) I've attached it to this post. Make sure you backup your stock Keyboard.apk and Keyboard.odex first!

Quick how-to:
1) adb push Keyboard_ICS+.apk /mnt/sdcard/
2) adb to TFP, remount system read-write
3) cd /system/app, cp Keyboard.* /mnt/sdcard/backups (or where ever you want to keep your originals)
4) rm Keyboard.*
5) cp /mnt/sdcard/Keyboard_ICS+.apk ./Keyboard.apk
6) chmod 644 Keyboard.apk
7) reboot

When your TFP comes back up, you should be able to hit the browser button on the dock and it should launch ICS Browser+ (assuming you've got it installed already).

Props to appelflap for making a kick-ass browser, and to Swiftks for deodexing the system files.

Would I be able to do this via root explorer?